Empire (50 page)

More punishments followed. The victims were all condemned criminals, guilty of a capital offense—murder, arson, or theft of sacred treasure from a temple.

The organizers of the games outdid themselves in the creation of special tableaux for the various ordeals, staging several of them at once around the vast arena so that there was always something dramatic or suspenseful to engage the spectators. The punishments were based on myths and legends, with the victims playing parts, like actors. The fact that each victim’s suffering and death were not imaginary but real made their performances all the more riveting to watch.

In one of the tableaux, the naked victim was chained to an elaborate stage set made to appear as a craggy cliff. A crier proclaimed that the victim was a murderer who had killed his own father. The audience booed and hurled curses at him. He was a muscular man of middle age with a
bristling beard, a suitable candidate to play Prometheus, the Titan who gave fire to mankind in defiance of Jupiter. To remind the audience of the story, dancers dressed in animal skins circled the shackled Titan, waved torches, and chanted a primitive song of thanksgiving. The song was suddenly drowned out by a stage device hidden inside the rock face, which loudly reproduced the sound of thunder. At this sign of Jupiter’s wrath, the worshippers of Prometheus dispersed in panic. As soon as they were out of the way, two bears were unleashed. The animals headed straight for the bound Prometheus, who began to scream and struggle frantically against his chains.

“Bears?” Epaphroditus wrinkled his nose. “Everyone knows Prometheus was tormented by vultures. Every day they tore out his entrails, and every night he was miraculously healed, so that the ordeal was endlessly repeated.”

Martial laughed. “The trainer who can induce vultures to attack on command will be able to name any price! I suspect we’ll see a lot of bears today. The emperor’s beast trainer tells me that bears are by far the best choice when it comes to attacking human victims. Hounds are too common, elephants too squeamish, lions and tigers too unpredictable. Bears, on the other hand, are not only terrifying but extremely reliable. These come from Caledonia, the northernmost part of the island of Britannia.”

The bears who converged on the helpless Prometheus lived up to their trainer’s expectations. They concentrated their furious attack on the man’s midsection, ripping out his entrails just as the vultures were said to have done in the ancient story. Martial voiced the opinion that the bears had been trained especially to attack that part of the man’s body; Epaphroditus suspected that honey had been smeared on the man’s belly. The victim’s screams were bloodcurdling.

At length the bears’ trainer appeared and shooed them away. The stage set was wheeled about in a circle so that the gory sight of the disemboweled Prometheus could be seen by everyone in the stands. Then the dancers reappeared, pirouetting and lamenting before Prometheus, waving their torches so that they produced a great deal of smoke. Only after they ran off did Lucius realize that the purpose of their dance and the smoke was to distract the audience from a bit of stagecraft being performed on the victim. As if by magic, his entrails had been stuffed back inside him and his belly
had been stitched up. Even the blood on his legs had been wiped clean. The man was extremely pale, but apparently conscious; his lips moved and his eyelids flickered. Just as the punishment of Prometheus was said to be repeated in an endless cycle, so this victim had been made ready for yet another assault by the bears. Again they came loping toward him. The man opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Instead of struggling against his chains, he twitched and convulsed as the bears proceeded to disembowel him again. Eventually even the twitching stopped.

The dancers reappeared. They cast aside their torches, flinging them onto the stage set. The mock cliff went up in flames, consuming the body of the victim with it. The dancers circled the bonfire, joined hands, and sang a song of jubilation, praising the wisdom and justice of Jupiter.

Lucius found himself wondering what Epictetus and Dio would have made of the tableau. The victim was not just a murderer but the very worst sort of murderer, a parricide. Surely he deserved to be punished, and why should his death not be used to educate the public? The tableau taught a double lesson. First, while men might sympathize with a rebel like Prometheus, the authority of the king of the gods—and by extension the authority of the emperor—must be respected, and would always triumph in the end. Second, on a more basic level, no man should dare to kill his own father, for fear of suffering such a terrible fate. Lucius suspected that his philosopher friends would be unmoved by such arguments. He himself was left feeling more queasy than uplifted by the spectacle.

There were a great many other such tableaux. As Martial had predicted, bears featured prominently in most of them. A temple thief was made to reenact the role of the robber Laureolus, made famous by the ancient plays of Ennius and Naevius; he was nailed to a cross and then subjected to the attack of the bears. A freedman who had killed his former master was made to put on a Greek chlamys and go walking though a stage forest populated by cavorting satyrs and nymphs, like Orpheus lost in the woods; when one of the satyrs played a shrill tune on his pipes, the trees dispersed and the man was subject to an attack by bears. An arsonist was made to strap on wings in imitation of Daedalus, ascend a high platform, and then leap off; the wings actually carried him aloft for a short distance, a remarkable sight, until he plunged into an enclosure full of bears and was torn to pieces.

“A bit repetitious, isn’t it, ending all the tableaux with bears?” said Epaphroditus.

“Ah, but those are Lucanian bears, not Caledonian,” said Martial. “Good Italian beasts, not exotic stock from beyond the sea. See how the people cheer them on? Poor Daedalus never stood a chance.”

After the punishments, there was an intermission. Acrobats once again ran onto the sand floor of the arena. Lucius and his friends went to the vestibule for refreshments and then to relieve themselves at the nearest latrina, where the quality of the bronze and marble fixtures was the finest Lucius had ever seen in a public facility. Martial joked that he felt unworthy to relive himself amid such splendor.

While his friends lingered in the vestibule, Lucius returned to his seat. Down in the arena, the lifeless body of an acrobat was being carried off.

“What that’s about?” he wondered aloud.

“The poor fellow was walking across a tightrope when he lost his balance and fell.” The voice came from the row in front of him. All the Vestals had left for the intermission except one. She turned in her seat and looked straight at him.

Lucius stared back at Cornelia. He could think of nothing to say.

The Vestal finally broke the silence. “He was hardly more than a child. I think they should use nets, don’t you?”

“I believe they practice with nets,” Lucius said. “But they never perform with them. That would eliminate the suspense.”

“It would still display their skill. I for one have no desire to see a tightrope walker die. What’s the point? Such a death is simply an accident, not a punishment or the outcome of a ritual combat. They’re acrobats, not murderers or gladiators. What’s your name?”

The question was so abrupt, he simply stared at her.

“It’s not a difficult question, surely.” She laughed. There was nothing malicious in her laugh. The sound of it gave him pleasure.

“Lucius Pinarius,” he said. “My father was Titus Pinarius.”

“Ah, yes, I know the name, though there don’t seem to be a great many of you about these days.”

“There was a time when the Pinarii were quite prominent,” said Lucius. “More than one Pinaria was a Vestal. One was rather famous. But that was a long time ago.”

She nodded. “That’s right, the Vestal Pinaria was among those trapped atop the Capitoline Hill when the Gauls sacked the city. We still talk about her, and pass down the story to the new sisters. That’s why your name is so familiar.” She looked him up and down. “You’re not wearing a senator’s toga. Not a politician, then. Nor are you a military man, I think. How did you merit such a choice seat on opening day?”

“You’re awfully forthright,” said Lucius.

“When you’re a Vestal, there’s really no point in being circumspect. I say what I mean and I ask what I want to know. Perhaps it’s different for other women.”

“I don’t know a lot about women,” he admitted.

“Now who’s being forthright?”

“Here come my friends,” he said. “One of them is a poet. The emperor likes his work; that’s why we have such good seats. Martial will write verses to celebrate the inaugural games.”

“Ah, I wondered who that fellow was, constantly chattering and scribbling on his wax tablet.”

“I’ll introduce you, if you like.” Lucius stood to let Martial pass. When he looked back, Cornelia had turned away. The other Vestals had returned to their seats.

The program recommenced with a series of animal exhibitions. First, a brightly decorated elephant with a trainer on its back ascended a ramp to a platform, then walked down a tightrope. While the spectators were still crying out in amazement, the elephant sauntered toward the imperial box, emitted a trumpetlike cry from its trunk, then folded its forelegs and dropped forward, making a very dignified bow to the emperor. The spectators responded with the first standing ovation of the day.

Hunting exhibitions followed. All manner of creatures were released, chased, and slain—boars, gazelles, antelopes, ostriches, the huge wild bulls of the Germanic lands called aurochs, and even the spindly-legged, long-necked creatures from farthest Africa called cameleopards, because they had a face like a camel and spots like a leopard. The hunters stalked their prey on foot and on horseback, using various weapons—bows and arrows, spears, knives, nets, and even nooses. Lucius, who enjoyed hunting boars and stags on his country estates, watched the exhibitions with interest and a bit of envy, especially when the hunters pursued the rarer or more dangerous
animals, since he himself would probably never have the opportunity to bring down a cameleopard or an aurochs. As the slaughter continued, attendants with wheelbarrows and rakes covered the pools of blood with fresh sand.

There were also exhibitions in which animals were pitted against each another. The audience thrilled to see a leopard stalk and fell a cameleopard by leaping onto its huge neck. “Like a siege tower brought down by a catapult,” muttered Martial, searching for a metaphor.

A tigress had less luck pursuing an ostrich. The absurdity of a bird unable to fly was obvious, but the creature could run with amazing speed. The tigress eventually gave up the chase and crouched, panting, on the sand. The spectators laughed and shouted mockery at the feline, disgusted by a cat unable to catch a flightless bird. But when the tigress’s mate was unleashed, the same spectators fell silent and watched in fascination as the two cats appeared to use a coordinated strategy to trap the ostrich. The bird ran this way and that as the cats closed in.

“My old friend Pliny, not long before Vesuvius put an end to him, wrote that the ostrich hides its head in a bush when attacked and thinks its whole body is concealed,” said Martial. “See how the attendants have placed bits of shrubbery all around the arena, so that the bird may demonstrate its foolish behavior?”

But the ostrich did not hide its head. Eventually, in desperation, it used its long, powerful legs to kick furiously at the nearest tiger. This gained the ostrich a brief respite, but the bird was quickly exhausted, while the tigers seemed to find fresh strength. The ostrich at last resorted to lying flat on the ground with its long neck and head pressed against the earth. In the rippling haze of heat that rose from the sand, the bird looked like a lifeless mound of earth, and for a while the cats were confounded. They circled the prostrate, motionless bird, sniffing the air and growling. At last the tigress began to paw at the ostrich, which gave a twitch, whereupon the feline pounced and seized the ostrich’s long neck in its powerful jaws. The two cats hissed at each other and fought over the carcass for a while, much to the amusement of the audience, then settled down to share the feast. When they were done, attendants plucked the huge feathers from the dead bird and handed them out as souvenirs to the nearest spectators, who used them to decorate their clothing or fan themselves.

To see an animal hunted, whether by a man or by another animal, thrilled the audience. But far more exciting was the spectacle of seeing one fearsome beast pitted against another in equal combat. For the inaugural games, the emperor had arranged a pairing that had never been seen before. First a wild aurochs was released into the arena. The gigantic bull had huge horns and a fiery temper, as was demonstrated when trainers behind wooden enclosures taunted the creature by throwing red balls at it. The aurochs charged at the cloth balls and managed to spear one of them on his right horn. The clinging ball angered the creature even more. He snorted and tossed his head furiously until the ball went flying into the stands. Spectators leaped to their feet, shoving and struggling against one another to claim it.

Next, a creature that many of those present had never seen before was released into the arena. This was the rare rhinoceros, a beast whose iron-colored flesh appeared to be made of plated armor and whose enormous nose terminated in a formidable pair of horns, one large and one small. As fearsome as the aurochs might be, it was clearly a relative of the domesticated bull familiar even to the city-dwellers of Roma, and was a creature of grace and beauty, but the rhinoceros was like no other animal, an exotic being from the ends of the earth.

By taunting both animals with balls, prods, and torches, driving them closer and closer together, the trainers eventually induced them to fight. Their methods of combat were so similar that one seemed to be the distorted mirror image of the other. They stood their ground, stamped their feet, shook their haunches, lowered their heads, and finally charged. On the first clash, they only grazed each other, as if each were merely testing his opponent. They drew apart, faced each other, then charged again. This time the aurochs delivered a glancing blow against the rhinoceros, which snorted in pain. The wagering in the stands, which had been heavily against the aurochs, was suddenly reversed.